CENSOR, In short and pithy memorial the Censor Wen-vii denounces the acting magistrate of Teungchow, Chang Chao-feng, for wanton disregard of human life, and various acts of extortion. Healleges that on more than one occasion prisoners lodged in the magistrate's gaol have been treated with such severity that they died in consequence, their deaths being invariably hushed up, whilst the instances of extortion are so numerous that it is impossible to mention them all. He cites the case of a man named Fu, who was thrown into prison and kept there for a long period on account of some trifling dispute about " piece of land and prevented from obtaining meical assistance when he fell sick; and his death which resulted in consequence of this treatment being nevertheless hushed up somehow or other, in spite of an appeal by the relatives of the deceased to the Provincial Treasurer. In support of the charges of extortion memorialist alleges that certain grain merchants who had already paid their full quota of government taxes were compelled to pay them over again and prevented from doing any business until the matter had been settled by payment of a sum of Tls. 1,000, another similar charge being that the magistrate allowed his own servants to exact from a certain grain-broker a fixed squeeze for every day in the month. Such open and barefaced dereliction of duty, within so short a distance from the capital is not to be tolerated, and memorialist
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.